


Waterfront

by levendis



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Bittersweet, Gen, Queerplatonic Relationships, Subtext, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 19:45:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10725960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: They made a promise, and they're sticking to it. Mostly.





	Waterfront

There’s a really very oppressive silence in the TARDIS right now. It’s one of the few emotional contexts the Doctor’s become able to grasp, the sense of an anvil about to drop onto their head. Even the TARDIS is in on it, providing dramatic mood lighting and weird noises.

Nardole is looking at the Doctor like they’ve made a really obvious mistake, again. Like all the bad stuff is a cycle they can’t get out of, could never hope to, and no one is surprised. At least they both have mugs of strong tea, that tends to smooth over the rough edges.

“So you and this. William.”

“Bill, possibly short for William, I keep forgetting to ask.” The Doctor tries to grin, like it’s just a funny no-consequence thing - there’s probably too much in the way of nerves, there, how they can’t help but bare their teeth.

“The two of you.” Nardole is staring at them hard, like he strongly suspects a Secret is being kept from him. A dangerous one. Again.

“Yes.” The Doctor stares down at the milk swirling through their tea. Nardole knows they don’t take theirs with milk, this is some sort of obscure personal attack. The Doctor does their best to feel offended.

“You’re very close, aren’t you.”

“It’s not like that,” the Doctor says.

“You’re not sleeping with her? Or you’re not traveling with her? Not sure which implication you’re responding to.” Nardole carefully and deliberately sips his tea.

“Both. Neither. She is a student, I am a professor. It’s a normal student/professor relationship. We are doing the normal things, in this normal university.”

“You’ve said that before.”

“And I meant it. I mean it now. But it’s hard, Nardole, it is so very hard, doing this year after year. All in the same place. I’m _bored_ , Nardole, in a way that nearly physically hurts. And you may not understand that, how excruciating this is. But it is. And Bill is the first interesting thing to have happened to me in over a decade, and it’s not anything else, it’s not anything at all, it’s just - what it is. Can I have this one thing, please?” The Doctor pauses, looking forlornly down at his unfortunately milky tea. “And she’s not into the, you know, the shaped-like-me, and I’m not - there’s none of that. More importantly the TARDIS remains out of order. I promise.”

Nardole’s face falls at _the first interesting thing_ before automatically rebuilding into his usual vaguely-pleasant slightly-confused expression. “You know I know you’re lying, yes?”

“Bully for you.” The Doctor swings around the console, hands ghosting over all the buttons they’d promised not to push. “I stand by the sentiment,” he said. “If not the tone. I shouldn’t have - you’re not uninteresting.”

“I know what you meant,” Nardole says. Clipped consonants, the familiar disappointment.

Twenty steps, from the console to the TARDIS doors. The Doctor makes it in record time.

 

* * *

Bill’s new and different and difficult and strange. She’s bold and strong, even if she doesn’t want to be, even if she’s afraid of the consequences, unwilling or scared to own up, but flourishing so easily when anyone says _go ahead, go for it, you do you_. She’s complicated and baffling and annoying and brilliant and the Doctor has no doubt at all that, if this were a different situation, a different reference point, they’d ask her to step into the TARDIS. Just once, just to see her expression, and then after that - it’d be up to her.

Mainly they grade her essays. Mainly the two of them sit in the Doctor’s office, feeling the potential weigh heavy. It feels right for her, mostly, she doesn’t need all that in her life. But still. The could-be’s, the would-be’s. The whole universe sitting just outside. The vault in the basement.

“Bold move, starting with a quote from the Bible,” they say.

“Physics, religion - they’re both just about searching for understanding, right?” She’s looking at them expectantly, hopefully.

“Fair enough,” they say, flipping through the pages.

 

* * *

(And they can feel it, that thing, through the space between the words - she is clever and hard-working and thorough but fuck all that, what matters is curiosity, weirdness; is yearning and a need to learn and explore and change and be changed. The same as they’ve always sensed since they first caught sight of her in the lecture hall. Like all they would need would be to open the TARDIS doors, and gesture inside - but they’re not doing that, these days. They made a promise.)

 

* * *

“I’m sorry,” Nardole says. They’re re-calibrating the vault shield, this is terrible timing for unnecessary regret.

“For what.” The Doctor aims the sonic towards the vault door lock, and then at Nardole’s face, just in case it works this time. It does not.

“For implying.”

“Expand?”

“About you and your human.”

“Expand further.”

“I’m sorry for implying that you had a. A, um. Sexual interest. In your human.” Nardole presses the button at the precise right time, as he’s done for the past fifty years, give or take a few motor-control-related errors. “Dunno why I said that. I know you’re not like that.”

The Doctor flicks the sonic at the lock, twirls it, then pockets it neatly. Their face is about as blank as they know how to make it. “I must have missed that. It’s all right, anyway, you’re officially forgiven. Are we done here? It feels like we’re done here.”

They’re done here. Nardole spends a few minutes triple-checking the security protocols as the Doctor hurries to the outside and the fresh air and the where-a-sun-would-be-if-this-wasn’t-England.

 

Later, Nardole makes tea and sets out a platter of biscuits on the TARDIS console. He drinks his tea in silence, watching the Doctor vaguely orbit closer to the mug - extra sweet no milk - and attendant jammy dodgers. The Doctor is still floating noncommittally as Nardole finishes his tea, sets his mug down on the floor, and heads off to bed. Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the vortisaurs bite.

 

* * *

(The Doctor knows there’s something there, that there is something important about the particular way Nardole leaves. How he looks at them just before he goes. A want, a need, an ache, an emptiness. A hole the Doctor doesn’t quite get how to fill. Still, they follow him, after a respectable pause, and they knock on his door, and they say ‘sorry’ and Nardole says 'right-o’ and they crawl into bed together, the Doctor paying close if not entirely comprehending attention to the various ways in which Nardole’s breath hitches. Maybe this makes it better, maybe this makes it worse.)

 

* * *

They could be anywhere but here. They should be everywhere but here. They readjust their socks and find their boots and put their coat on backwards, but roll with it, and are out the door before Nardole has a chance to look recriminating. It’s a morning, of sorts. Another day on linear Earth. A day after the previous day and before the next day. Days after days after days - but they’d made a promise, so. They put the kettle on and leave a packet of digestives on the kitchen counter and then leave, before their momentum has a chance to dissipate.

 

* * *

“You know things,” Bill says. She’s staring at them with those wide, am-I-in-on-the-joke eyes. “Lots of things.”

“I’m a professor, it’s my job.” They put her latest essay on top of the pile of papers, and then under, and then somewhere in the middle, for later when maybe they can do sort of a card-trick type move on themselves.

“Too many things. Like, it’s uncanny.”

“You have a Google too, you know.”

“And you - you talk about things like you _know_ them, like you were there, but obviously you’ve never been to ancient Rome, or outer space, so.”

“It’s called 'imagination’,” they say, dog-earing the corner of her essay.

“Yeah, but. It’s more than that, isn’t it.” _Isn’t it?_ she’s asking silently, hopefully. Like some part of her is still a child in desperate need of a dream.

And it is true, and she is right, and it’d be so simple to say, yes, it is more, and yes you are right, and also I have a time machine - but they can’t. Or they shouldn’t. Or they won’t, anyway.

Not yet, at least.


End file.
